


In The Stars

by luninosity



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Conversations, Established Relationship, Ethics, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, Love Confessions, M/M, Mostly Dialogue, Protective!Erik, Star Trek: TOS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-22
Updated: 2012-10-22
Packaged: 2017-11-16 19:51:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/543211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles sometimes works too hard, Erik finds ways to distract him, and then there’s some discussion of Star Trek, naked green slave women, hate as a weapon, ethical choices, and first-time I-love-yous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a gift during last year's secret_mutant fic exchange. The script that Charles is reading is Gene Roddenberry’s original pilot script for the very first Star Trek episode ever, “The Cage.” Technically there’s some timeline tweaking here, as Star Trek doesn’t premiere until 1966, but Roddenberry spent years working on and trying to sell his script to a network, so it’s not that big a stretch. Also, I, er, sort of combined two of the prompter's requests—“space western” and “what Erik can give to Charles”. Title, opening, and closing lines from the Foo Fighters’ “My Poor Brain”.

_we hide in the stars_   
_that’s where our heads are_   
_my head and your heart_   


“Charles?”

“Hmm?” Charles didn’t look up from the stack of paper in front of him. This, Erik decided, was unacceptable.

“What are you working on?”

“Oh…it’s not work. Well, not really. It’s a favor for a friend. He asked me if I could read this and provide commentary—”

“Do you have to do that now?”

“It’s interesting!”

“Charles,” Erik sighed, and then gave up on verbal persuasion, because Charles in intellectual mode probably wouldn’t listen anyway. Because Charles, in intellectual mode, could go without registering any distractions for days.

Of course, Erik’s job, in that case, involved providing a distraction that couldn’t be ignored.

So he thought for a second, and then came up with a certain image. More precisely, a certain action. Focused very hard.

He could tell the exact second that Charles picked that one up, because the pen hit the desk with a cheerful clatter.

_Isn’t this more interesting?_

_You—we just did that this morning!_

_Not THIS, we didn’t._

_Oh…all right, then. You. Bedroom. Now._

“No.”

“No?”

“Here.”

_Here?_

_On your desk._ Said desk was, as usual, a calamitous sprawl of paper and books and pens and dog-eared journal articles, a half-consumed cup of now-cold tea and the crinkled bag of candied pineapple that he’d hidden there weeks ago in an attempt to ensure that Charles ate something on days like this, and Erik contemplated how easy it would be to shove it all to one side, onto the floor, scattered tangible evidence of how perfect they were together.

 _But—_ Charles now sounded horribly torn between wanting that, too, and plaintive protectiveness regarding his academic detritus. _But I know where everything is!_

_In that disaster?_

_It’s an organized disaster!_

_Charles, I’m running out of patience._

“Um…chair?”

“Fine.”

Afterwards, after he’d left Charles panting and exhausted and thoroughly disheveled, he stretched an arm out and plucked the top piece of paper off of the tantalizing pile.

_Hey!_

Obviously Charles was too tired to protest out loud, but not too tired to scowl at him.

“I just wanted to know what was keeping you occupied all afternoon. You said you had work to do.” And he’d tried very hard to understand that.

He’d never thought, in his cool and bloody and purpose-driven life, about research, about pure knowledge, just for the joy of it. He knew the joy of success, of course, the thrill of finding the object of his hunt. In some ways, that was very much the same. In other ways, not. For Charles, discovery could be had without pain. And knowledge came with laughter.

He wanted to smile, every time Charles started lecturing him on evolution or genetics or the theories of Charles Darwin.

Of course, he very much wanted to smile every time he looked at Charles. And that was a new feeling, too. He liked that one.

_Thank you._

With the other hand, Erik fished a piece of pineapple out of the bag, and held it next to perfect lips until Charles gave in and ate it from his fingers. _You weren’t supposed to hear that._

“Mmm.” _I’m not going to apologize; I liked it. You really think I’m adorable when I lecture?_

“More?” _I—you—it’s not polite to eavesdrop, Charles._

“By all means, feed me if you like.” This time Charles licked his fingertips, afterward, a slow caress of tongue that made Erik briefly reconsider the bedroom suggestion. _And you think such wonderful things about me. I rather enjoy hearing them._

Erik grumbled something inarticulate under his breath, and then stared at the paper he’d stolen off the desk.

“Charles?”

“Yes?”

“This is a…movie script?”

“Television pilot.” Charles yawned. Wriggled around and sat up, still very naked, in Erik’s lap. “Science fiction. He asked for my advice…”

“Since when do you know anything about television?”

“I don’t. But I do know something about evolution. And telepathy, not that he knows that. Apparently he wants to make certain that the science, what there is, is accurate…”

“Charles, there’s a naked green slave woman in this scene.”

“She’s a telepathic projection!”

“Is she a scientifically accurate one?”

“I said it was interesting. No, not because of that. Well, maybe a little—”

Erik tried not to laugh, at that hastily-edited reply. _Oh, you want naked green slave women now?_

_No! …but you can leave your hand there, if you like. And, er…_

_You’re thinking about being on your knees, ah, ‘naked and oiled and willing to be taken advantage of,’ aren’t you?_

_Perhaps…_

_Now?_ He did very much like the idea of Charles as a willing sex slave.

 _Aren’t you tired? You just—with the—oh, you know, you were there!  And, yes, of course I also like the idea of me being your willing sex slave. As you very emphatically know._ “—and actually it’s surprisingly intellectual. And I think you’d like the starship captain. He reminds me a bit of you.”

“Really…” He’d never been a fan of science fiction. The present world had problems enough; he couldn’t begin to imagine a happy, glistening, optimistic future.

But Charles could. Of course.

“Here.” Charles handed pages over. “He described it to me as a ‘Wagon Train To The Stars.’ Sort of…space western. But it’s more than that, I promise.”

“You seriously want me to read this?”

“Certainly. I’m no literary critic, and you might have more insight about the characters.”

“Fine.” _Can I still leave my hand there?_

_Of course._

He meant to only humor Charles, because they were still warm and naked in the golden afternoon light, wrapped around each other in Charles’s enormously comfortable desk chair. He meant to read the first few pages, or just until Charles went to sleep, relaxed and no longer preoccupied by anything at all.

Half an hour later, he stopped reading to say, definitively, “Captain Pike would never have trusted the alien woman enough to sleep with her, in any case.”

“Hmm?” Charles _had_ been asleep. “All right, why not?”

“Because…” He flipped pages. Stopped. “Someone who could write this—who could think this—listen, ‘you have to concentrate on hate, they can’t see through it’—Hate as a weapon. Hate as protection. Someone who could think that way would never let down his guard, ever.”

Charles raised both eloquent eyebrows at him, now fully awake. “But he’s not just a creature of hate; he also shows mercy…”

“Where? This part? ‘I’m betting that you’ve created an illusion that this phaser is empty. Shall I test my theory on your head?’ ”

“I did think you’d like him. But, no, after that. When he understands why the girl can’t leave with him. Because she wouldn’t fit in, among humans, and he lets her stay where she feels safe—”

“That’s an excuse. She’s afraid.”

“You’d want her to choose to leave the people she feels comfortable with? To go with the man who’s just used hate as a weapon?”

“I’d want her to _choose_. Freely. After having seen both worlds.”

“Mmm…all right. But you don’t feel for the telepathic race, at all? They’re going to die, without the new blood of the human race to sustain them. Because the captain chooses not to stay in their world.”

“In their world of illusion. They shouldn’t have kidnapped him.”

“Illusion…” Charles looked away, for a second. “But they’re still going to die, it’s not that black and white…”

“Charles, they held him against his will, and he fought back.”

“With hate.”

“With the only weapon he had left.”

“It’s still not that simple. Look at the beginning. And then at the end. At the beginning, he’s broken, tired, exhausted, having just come out of a war…”

“I saw.”

“And at the end—after all the illusions, after the idea that he’s been chosen for something, even if he decides not to go through with it, the knowledge that he _is_ special, that the girl does—love him—what does he say?”

Pages rustled again.

“He says that he feels better for it, doesn’t he? Knowing that all these other choices exist?”

“He still saved himself with hate.” _Charles, we’re not really talking about science fiction, are we?_

“But he holds the gun—the phaser, sorry—in his hand, and then chooses not to kill. Not to indulge the desire for revenge, once he’s freed himself.” _You tell me._

“This writer—“

“He used to be a police officer, or so I recall.” _Someone who stood on the front lines. Who saw terrible things. Who still dreamed about a world like this, that there could be a future world like this. Full of possibilities. Full of new frontiers._

_Among all the possibilities, Charles…there are still weapons. And pain. And people using other people._

_And people who pity other people._

_So the glorious new frontier needs both, he’s saying._

_Reluctantly so._

_Him, or you?_

_Erik?_

_Yes?_

_I love you, you know._

_You—_

_You make me question all my optimism, and you see the world in bruises and sharpness, and you push me when I need to be pushed, and you hide pineapple in my desk because you worry that I don’t eat, and you read science fiction if I ask you to, and you challenge me, always, and I do need that, and I need you, you know, and I love you._ And he could feel the truth of that, like surprised sunbeams, glinting up at him out of brilliant blue eyes, endless and clear as tropical oceans. Charles meant it all. Every damn word.

Charles loved him.

Of all the possibilities, every new frontier, that was one he’d never even dreamed of.

But the answer was easy. Out of all those infinite possibilities, it was the only one that felt real.

_Charles?_

_Yes?_

_I love you, too_.

my head and your heart  
the same in the stars


End file.
